A young woman in Canada’s Saskatchewan Province recently garnered 8.7 million views on a TikTok video of her planting 4,545 trees in a single day.
The video’s author, Leslie Dart, doesn’t have a career in forestry, and rather recently entered the workforce in aerospace manufacturing, a field in which she recently graduated at Durham College in Ontario.
The tree-planting is simply a popular summer job for university students that can nevertheless absorb some people with its deeply-meaningful monotony.
For sometimes 15 hours a day, Leslie slams a spade into the ground, levers out the dirt, drops in a seedling, tamps it down with her boot, and moves on to the next one.
This kind of tree planting is mandated by certain provincial laws to be done in conjunction with logging. Pretty much every tree that’s logged for Canada’s prosperous timber industry is replanted by paid volunteers like Leslie, who makes between 17 and 44 cents per seedling planted, and has planted 372,290 trees over the past three summers.
Sometimes the work is on the desolate remains of an area scorched by wildfires, other times it’s in humid logged forest on uneven ground, filled with overgrowth of spikey Devil’s Club, and swarming with mosquitoes. Wherever her spade takes her though, she says it’s deeply rewarding work which becomes such a part of one’s life that they come back year after year to volunteer.
MORE GOOD FOREST NEWS: Planting Trees in a City 30 Years Ago May Have Lowered the Risk of Deaths From Diseases
“I think every parent in Canada should be sending their kid out tree planting because it will take your child and it’ll turn them into a worker,” Kenny Chaplin, a veteran planter of 35 summers and works in the film industry, as well as a substitute teacher, told the Terrace Standard.
“They’ll learn how to work, they’ll have responsibility. They’ll have money in their pockets.”
@lesliedart Another day, another 3,500 trees in the ground. 🌲 It’s kind of fun to think of every work day like planting a tiny forest :) #treeplanting #forestry #replant #planttrees #greenplanet #afforestation #treeplantingbc #planttreesgetdegrees #womeninforestry #helicopter #heliwork #treeplantertok #treeplantingtok #treeplanting2022 #treeplanter ♬ AIN'T GONNA STOP - Carol Kay
Another tree planter who spoke with the Terrace Standard was photographer and filmmaker Rita Leistner, who worked as a war reporter during Iraq War II.
OTHER MARATHON TREE PLANTERS: Turkey Will Declare a Holiday Dedicated to Planting Trees After Young Man’s Tweet Goes Viral
“When I worked in war zones, and people asked me: what prepared me for that work, I told them: tree planting in Canada,” she said.
Reforestation requirements for logging companies and following forest fires have seen 1.6 billion trees replanted in western Canadian provinces, and with devoted individuals like Chaplin and Dart, it’s easy to understand how.
WATCH her in action…
@lesliedart I planted 4,545 trees today 🌲 Going to do it all again tomorrow, yeehaw! #treeplanting #forestry #replant #planttrees #greenplanet #afforestation #treeplantingbc #planttreesgetdegrees #womeninforestry #heliwork #treeplantertok #treeplantingtok #treeplanting2022 #treeplanter ♬ Get It Get It Get It - Kalin And Myles
SHARE This Inspiring Individual Worker With Your Friends…